ABSTRACT
In his regular 'London Letter' for the American journal Partisan Review, George Orwell commented, 'The English left-wing intelligentsia worship Stalin because they have lost their patriotism and their religious belief without losing their need for a god and a fatherland'. Orwell took very seriously three international conferences of intellectuals orchestrated by Moscow in 1948-49: Wroclaw, Paris and New York. In Victor Serge's Comrade Tulyaev people move from Russia's purges to Paris, where Xenia, daughter of the stammering apparatchik Popov, is now desperately trying to rouse opinion against the trial of the distinguished historian Rublev. In a scene which serves as a prototype for mockery of French fellow-travellers, Xenia meets Professor Passereau, 'famous in two hemispheres, the President of the Congress for the Defence of Culture, corresponding member of the Moscow Academy of Sciences'. Xenia begs him to intervene on behalf of the distinguished historian Rublev.
